The invention relates to a pharmaceutical automation system. More particularly, the present invention relates to a pharmaceutical tablet dispensing and packaging system which facilitates cleaning and maintenance of tablet passage channels through which tablets are released for tablet packaging.
In order to increase capacity for housing the tablet cassettes, a flat type cabinet or a cylindrical type cabinet have been widely adopted to stack therein as many tablet cassettes as the system allows. Each tablet in the tablet cassettes comes to fall through a tablet channel into a tablet packaging portion. So each tablet channel inevitably holds on its wall either dusts or debris out of the dropping tablets. A tiny amount of tablet debris may result in medical care for a patient taking tablets packaged through the conventional tablet dispensing and packaging system. FIG. 9 shows a conventional swingable tablet cassette cabinet 2 that results in difficulty cleaning tablet channels 4 between tablet cassettes 6 for tablets to fall from the cassettes.
As shown in FIGS. 8 and 9, Korean Utility Model No. 0297047 discloses a main body 100, cassettes 102, a base cabinet 104, tablet channels 106, tablet packaging unit 108a, front door cabinet 110a, rear door cabinet 110b, and vertical plate 114. Tablets are released through the channels 106 formed by the waved vertical plates 114 of the cabinets 110a, 110b. The front and rear door cabinets 110a, 110b are selectively opened to clean tablet debris from the channels 106. However, the '047 does not allow total cleaning since the cabinets are formed in an undetachable format, disadvantageously requiring significant amount of time in cleaning the channels because the cabinets need to be detached from the system.